Fjordman

Islamic “Reformism” and Jihad: On the Discourse of Tariq Ramadan

An interesting analysis from Paul Landau at the Transatlantic Intelligencer about Tariq Ramadan, fake Muslim reformist and wolf in sheep's clothing:



Islamic “Reformism” and Jihad: On the Discourse of Tariq Ramadan

Another aspect of Al-Afghani’s model that influenced the Muslim Brothers is the practice of dissimulation or taqqiya [10]: “If you cannot say something openly, one must say the contrary”. As Dominique Urvoy has observed, Al-Afghani’s taqqiya is also to be found in Tariq Ramadan:

In the first place, he plays with words, as when he uses the term “secularism” in order to say something different [from what is customarily understood by this term]. Moreover, as Abdou Felaly put it during a conference in Toledo in referring to a certain “mental restriction”, he does not say everything….

Professor Urvoy has put his finger on one of the essential elements of the discourse of Tariq Ramadan: an element that became evident during his famous televised debate with Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003, during the latter’s first tenure as French Minister of the Interior. When questioned by Sarkozy concerning the practice of stoning adulterous women in certain Muslim countries, Tariq Ramadan – like his brother Hani [11] – declared himself in favor of a “moratorium” on the application of this particularly barbarous form of punishment. This is to say, to speak clearly, that Ramadan is for stoning, but defends a temporary suspension of the practice. The term “moratorium” was not chosen by accident. It designates a “pause granted prior to continuing an activity in a given domain”. Now, this corresponds precisely to the Islamist strategy of “suspension” of controversial doctrinal points discussed by Dominique Urvoy:

If a democratic norm contradicts an Islamic norm, one can abrogate the latter temporarily, but one will re-establish it later when the time is right. The controversial points are allowed to hibernate, but it is altogether a matter of reactivating them sooner or later…. For example, jihad, which Muslims are supposed to renounce if they live in the West or at least to interpret in a purely “interior” manner, but which they are obligated to re-institute as soon as this becomes possible. We will see how on precisely this last point Tariq Ramadan also practices taqqiya, appearing to condemn jihad even as he condones it.



"They Live in a Bleak, Devastated Universe", Interview with Tariq Ramadan

SPIEGEL: Is a tendency toward violence inherent to Islam? Isn't it true that many Muslims view jihad as an elementary part of Islamic identity?

Ramadan: Are the Crusades an elementary part of Christianity? No. Every community has the right to self-defense.

SPIEGEL: Your words are like those of a rationalist, an enlightened theologian with purely intellectual ambitions. But in political reality, in France, Great Britain and the United States, you are suspected of secretly promoting the expansion of Islam and sympathizing with violence. Have you been eating chalk? Are you speaking with a forked tongue?

Ramadan: Oh yes, I am one of the most maligned Muslim intellectuals. Tariq Ramadan, the slippery trickster. They talk about people like me the way they used to talk about the Jews: He is Swiss and European, but his loyalties also lie elsewhere. He says one thing and thinks something else. He is a member of an international organization -- in the past, it was world Jewry, today it's world Islam. I am disparaged as if I were a Muslim Jew.

SPIEGEL: Could that have something to do with your family history? Your grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, was the founder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, an organization that envisioned an Islamic fundamentalist transformation.

Ramadan: Thoughts are not genetically inherited traits. I admire my grandfather for his anti-colonial fight against the British. He was very involved in education for girls and women. His five daughters -- my aunts and my mother -- all attended university. And the organization he founded was very progressive for its time. However, I am highly critical of the Brotherhood, with its affected, conspiratorial behavior, its hierarchical structures and its oversimplified slogans.

posted by Unknown @ 3:33 PM